Knobby

Decided to watch The Order of the Phoenix last night. When I had read the first book, it was the vividness of this new world - imagination unleashed - that had drawn me. Watching the movie last night reminded me why, despite having read all seven books, I had felt they weren't really for all ages. The idea of the conventional good and bad need to be refined, to be better understood instead of being pushed beneath a pile of stereotypes. New writers can build upon and expand what has been already said. But a whole generation grew up reading these books. Perhaps with life, they will outgrow them too.

Of course Artur Sammler Saul Bellow is an entirely different creature and has me hooked:

"Intellectual man had become an explaining creature. Fathers to children, wives to husbands, lecturers to listeners, experts to laymen, colleagues to colleagues, doctors to patients, man to his own soul, explained. The roots of this, the causes of the order, the source of events, the history, the structure, the reasons why. For the most part in one ear, out the other. The soul wanted what it wanted. It had its own natural knowledge. It sat unhappily on superstructures of explanation, poor bird, not knowing which way to fly."